movie covers on books

I feel like the biggest controversy (not really) in the book loving world is surrounding putting movie covers on books. Most people absolutely detest it, stating that it ruins the book and that it is the worst thing to happen to the book world ever.

Now while I will probably always pick the non-movie cover of the book I don’t believe that it is the worst thing that can come to the literary world and here are some of the pros and cons to this:

Pro: Publicity for the book. Movie adaptations of books generally have big name stars attached to them, with quite a bit of money for promotion. By promoting the book that will become a movie by changing the cover more people are going to pick up the book and read it.

Con: Takes away from your imagination. When you look at the versions of the characters that the movie has created it can be hard to then imagine your own and when they are staring at you from the cover it is hard to get away from it.

Pro: More options. Most of the time when a movie cover of a book comes out it doesn’t completely replace the old cover, it just gives people more options to chose from when they are picking which one they want to buy.

Con: It can date the book. Movie covers can get old really quickly, especially if the movie didn’t do well and the books are kicking around for a lot longer than the memory of the movie.

Now some movie tie-in covers are done better than others. I personally like the ones that try to play off the cover of the original book. One I saw recently that did this is “The Hate You Give” I love that they put the actress on the cover, but in the same pose and style as the original.

In conclusion, you can buy movie tie-in covers of books or not, but I believe that they do more good than harm and the more things that can get people reading the better.